Getting the technician-to-staff ratio right in ambitious businesses with a limited IT support services budget can be tricky. Having the right IT staffing ratios will significantly impact your organization's efficiency, productivity, and overall performance. However, this must be balanced with cost optimization.

Hiring new staff for your support team requires careful consideration for financial and logistical reasons. That’s why it’s so important to look for solutions that optimize your existing structure rather than continually adding IT support staff to your payroll.

What Is the Optimal IT Team-to-Staff Ratio?

The optimal IT team-to-staff ratio will vary from business to business depending on several factors. For this reason, pinpointing an exact ratio is complicated. An average ratio according to industry benchmarks gives you a rough idea of the support your competitors have.

Research on the ideal IT staffing ratio has offered very different results. For example:

• The Organizing for Results: IT Structures and Staffing Survey by people3, Mercer Human Resource Consulting, and ITAA found an average ratio of 1:18 IT staff to employees in organizations with fewer than 500 workers. This rose to 1:23 in organizations with 1,000-5,000 employees, 1:25 in workplaces with 5,000-10,000 workers, and 1:40 in larger companies with 10,000 or more employees.
• A 2008 Robert Half® Technology survey indicated that the actual ratio of end users to technical support employees was 136:1 whereas the ideal ratio was considered to be 82:1. This shows that ratios have improved significantly in the last two decades.

In reality, an “optimal” ratio is only one way of measuring how effective your support system is. Equipping your existing team to maximize their productivity with the right training and tools could be a better way to boost productivity than adding staff to “improve” your ratio.

Factors that Determine Your Ideal IT:Staff Ratio

Several factors impact how many support staff businesses need:

• The size of your organization: Your IT staff-to-employee ratio will largely depend on how big your company is, as this will affect the IT workload.
• Who your IT team supports: Support teams often assist more than just your staff members. For example, an IT team in a school supports the school's admin, teachers, other staff, and students.
• The complexity of your IT network: IT departments offer much more than just help desk support. They also monitor, maintain, and update your network. This means the complexity of your operating systems will impact the size of your team.

Tech-to-Staff Ratio in Businesses that Use MSPs

The ideal ratio between MSP help desk staff and employees is a more nuanced question that will depend on the services the MSP offers and the number of services your Service Level Agreement includes. The reality is that a single MSP technician often serves anything from 200-300 endpoints.

When choosing an MSP, the providers on your shortlist may be able to provide their own tech-to-user ratio. You can use this as one of the factors that influence your choice of provider. However, rather than focusing on how many techs each MSP offers, focusing on how efficiently and effectively their techs support users (based on metrics such as time to resolution) may be more illuminating.

Optimize Techs’ User Support

Offering the best service possible without overspending on personnel is the balance every business needs to strike. However, finding the magic ratio can be more challenging for different businesses. For example, MSPs or techs in IT teams with remote workers potentially work with businesses from a range of industries or circumstances that pose significantly different challenges.

In these cases, the key to offering excellent service isn’t only the number of technicians but having the systems in place to get the best out of the experts you have. For example, MSPs that use Thread communicate using the chat software each client already uses to identify the problem, open tickets (or “threads”), and resolve each problem as efficiently as possible. 

Thread’s Magic AI-powered chatbot automatically connects businesses with the most suitable technician for the job depending on factors like the complexity of the problem or industry experience. It also pushes urgent cases to the front of the queue, meaning issues that have the potential to interrupt business operations are solved first.

Thread optimizes technicians’ time as all communications are kept in the same place and the nature of the problem has already been established by the time the request lands on their desk. This leads to a 30% decrease in time to resolution and raises technician productivity threefold. This means the same number of technicians can handle more tickets in the same amount of time.

How to Optimize your IT Staffing Ratio

In the same way that MSPs can optimize their IT staff ratio using Thread, companies with in-house IT teams must optimize their technicians’ time.

IT AI and Automation

AI and automatic scripts are proving to be revolutionary in the IT industry as they streamline workflows for your technicians’ desk operations. It means that repetitive, manual, or mundane tasks require less of their precious time, freeing them up for more challenging and productive tasks.

Insights from the University of Cincinnati underline the fact that AI doesn’t replace workers; rather, it takes over routine functions so that IT professionals can focus on human-led tasks. Embracing technology that facilitates best working practices will therefore optimize the staff you have and may lead to fewer new hires.

Training

Staff training is fundamental for the smooth running of your IT department. Remember that this doesn’t only include regular training for your technicians but also for your employees. 

Staff training should take a two-pronged approach to ensure the fewest possible tickets are generated and productivity is maximized. Firstly, provide up-to-date training for your IT techs to face issues quickly and efficiently. Secondly, provide resources for employees to help them work through problems themselves to reduce the number of tickets they generate.

Tracking IT Tasks

Great organization is also an important part of optimizing your IT:staff ratio. Make sure staff members understand each technician's role and responsibilities, who to get in touch with in different situations, and the proper channels of communication.

Exceptional organization within the team also helps boost its productivity. Ensure everyone stays on top of the current status of different tickets and who is handling which tasks by using a centralized planner to keep everyone on the same page.

Effective IT Department Platforms 

Winston Churchill famously said, “Give us the tools and we will finish the job.” Giving your employees the tools to accomplish every aspect of their job seamlessly and with fewer disruptions is ultimately the best way to make the most of your IT team. 

Invest in solutions that allow your techs to focus on the job at hand and make each day as productive as possible. Technological solutions that help your existing techs invariably come at a lower cost than hiring new staff.

Use Solutions to Optimize Your IT Staff-to-Employee Ratios

Striking the right balance between cost and adequate staffing levels is important for every business that requires IT support. The right technical assistance ultimately pays for itself as it boosts productivity and keeps your essential systems and workers running.

Changing the way you approach IT support can be much more efficient and cost-effective than cutting your team. Consider working with an MSP that supports your business growth with the most efficient technological tools for the right balance between cost and performance.